Fuel materials may take on a variety of forms, from simple gases such as hydrogen to complex mixtures including aviation fuels. Due to their wide range of chemical compositions, chemical fuels may be generated through a variety of processes and may require facilities dedicated to synthesizing only a small number of possible fuel types. Such facilities may be optimized to generate only the fuels to which they are dedicated. Additionally, each facility may require a specific set of feed-stocks or precursor materials for fuel synthesis.
Typically, carbon-based fuels rely on thermal methods for their synthesis. Such methods may include pyrolysis, cracking, and endothermic synthesis steps. Such processes may generate excessive heat as a by-product of their synthetic methods. Further, such thermal chemistry-based synthetic methods may not be efficient even for an optimized facility.
It is therefore desirable to develop high efficiency methods for generating a variety of gaseous and/or liquid fuels from a limited number of readily available feed stocks.